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/təg-əv-wɔr/ Listen

Tug-of-war

noun

Any hard struggle between equally matched groups.

A contest in which teams pull of opposite ends of a rope; the team dragged across a central line loses.

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Etymology of 'Tug-of-war'

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"Tug-of-war" Quotes from Famous Books

... she paid for! How long had they used it for their meetings—sneaking in by that door from the back lane? Perhaps even before she went away—to bear his child! And there began in her a struggle between mother instinct and her sense of outrage—a spiritual tug-of-war so deep that it was dumb, unconscious—to decide whether her baby would be all hers, or would have slipped away from her heart, and be ...

— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... to let the enemy destroy the Colenso bridge, invaluable as it was. It became very evident that the enemy meant to fight tooth and nail, and that the passage of the Tugela would be disputed inch by inch. However, none was dismayed: all believed that when the great tug-of-war should come, they would be equal, and more than equal, to the occasion. Indeed, now that the forward movement of the troops had commenced, the camp was animated by a wave of patriotic fervour. The men were literally on fire with enthusiasm. ...

— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... or wading boots, worn by a Marquis of Savoy, and removed by means of a tug-of-war team and a rope coiled round the ...

— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... sung the child who is under their arms is caught and asked in a whisper if he will be an orange or lemon. He answers, and joins whichever side he chose, holding the other around the waist. The game continues until all are caught, and then there is a tug-of-war between the oranges ...

— Games for Everybody • May C. Hofmann

... to the control of the trusts. His Democratic opponents, especially Woodrow Wilson, are, as I write, in the midst of the Presidential campaign of 1912, trying to focus attention on the tariff. In a way the battle resembles a tug-of-war in which each of the two leading candidates is trying to pull the nation over to his favorite issue. On the side you can see the Prohibitionists endeavoring to make the country see drink as a central problem; the emerging socialists insisting ...

— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann